Category: Politics

This would have been an addition, a further restriction on RKBA by adding ‘dating partners’ to the original list of relationships that the ‘Lautenberg amendment’ added to the list of people who be permanently prohibited from lawfully possessing a gun. In other words, more gun control.

Lawmakers rolling out Violence Against Women Act without ‘controversial’ provision

A bipartisan group of lawmakers announced on Wednesday that it had reached an agreement on legislation to reauthorize the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) that forgoes a key provision that drew opposition from gun rights advocates.

Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Ala.) was joined by co-authors Sens. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), Joni Ernst (R-Iowa) and Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) in announcing the legislation at a press conference on Wednesday.

Actress Angelina Jolie, who has been working with lawmakers to promote the legislative effort, was also in attendance with other advocates, along with Sens. Susan Collins (R-Maine) and Sen. Shelley Moore Capito (R-W.Va.), who have also been involved in the push.

If passed, it would mark the first time in nearly a decade that the bill has been reauthorized — a move advocates have said is necessary to update the legislation to adequately meet the needs of those it is designed to protect.

“Together, we drafted a bill that preserves the good work of the last reauthorization bill in 2013,” Feinstein said, adding the bill will strengthen “existing programs to support survivors and to prevent and to respond to domestic violence, and that’s dating violence and sexual assault and stalking.”

Feinstein said the legislation will seek to enhance and expand services “for survivors of domestic violence, including survivors in rural communities, LGBT survivors,” as well as survivors with disabilities, and strengthen the criminal justice response to domestic violence.

However, Feinstein added that the bill “is not perfect” and will not address the so-called boyfriend loophole, despite recent efforts by the lawmakers to have it included in the legislation.

In late December, lawmakers unveiled a framework for their reauthorization proposal that outlined a provision advocates said would partially close the loophole by prohibiting individuals convicted of a misdemeanor crime of domestic violence against a dating partner from possessing or purchasing firearms or ammunition. Similar restrictions apply to spouses or formerly married partners under current law.

The move marked the latest attempt by lawmakers to go after the loophole in recent years, after previous efforts were attacked by gun rights groups and Republicans as unnecessary “gun control,” though proponents have said it would save lives.

“The boyfriend loophole is a play straight from the Biden gun control agenda. It’s just gun control,” Aidan Johnson, director of federal affairs at Gun Owners of America, said in an interview last month opposing the provision.

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States one step closer in uphill, unconventional approach to amend Constitution, limit federal govt power
17 states have passed the resolution calling for a convention of states

A state senator calling for constitutional amendments said that “overreach on the part of the federal government” has forced states to attempt reform in a way never accomplished before.

The Nebraska Legislature passed a resolution Jan. 28 calling on states to begin the formal process to pass constitutional amendments that would limit the federal government’s spending and jurisdiction, as well as set term limits for members of Congress.

“What’s driving this as much as anything is overreach on the part of the federal government,” Nebraska state Sen. Steve Halloran, who sponsored the resolution, told Fox News.

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Hypocrisy O’ The Day

From The Atlantic ,which is a laugh, as the staff there were rabid pro-mask/pro lockdown……up until the politics changed.

Open Everything. The time to end pandemic restrictions is now.

Well, he’s a politician which means he’s a professional liar.

Beto’s about-face on AR-15s: “I’m not interested in taking anything from anyone”

Virtually every poll in the state of Texas shows Robert Francis “Beto” O’Rourke’s gubernatorial campaign is in serious trouble, but the biggest sign that the Democrat is failing to make inroads with Texas voters came on Tuesday, as O’Rourke was stumping for votes in Tyler.

Here we are in 2022, and suddenly O’Rourke has a very different message for Texas voters.

Speaking to reporters, O’Rourke also took a question about his controversial stance on guns and remarks made in 2019 about taking away AR-15s and AK-47s.

“I’m not interested in taking anything from anyone. What I want to make sure that we do is defend the Second Amendment,” he said. “I want to make sure that we protect our fellow Texans far better than we’re doing right now. And that we listen to law enforcement, which Greg Abbott refused to do. He turned his back on them when he signed that permitless carry bill that endangers the lives of law enforcement in a state that’s seen more cops and sheriff’s deputies gunned down than in any other.”

So the guy who said he was coming for our guns now claims he wants to defend the Second Amendment, yet in the same breath declares that protecting our right to keep and bear arms means criminalizing carrying a gun without a government permission slip? Does he actually think anyone is going to buy his supposed newfound respect for the Second Amendment when he keeps belittling it?

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Georgia looking at enhanced weapons permits

In the state of Georgia, you’re required to have a permit to carry a firearm in any way. We’ve written a bunch about how constitutional carry is up for consideration, which is a good thing.

However, it’s far from the only pro-gun bill in the General Assembly, either.

One would basically recognize concealed carry bills from every other state. Frankly, if constitutional carry passes, that wouldn’t be overly useful.

Yet another bill would create enhanced permits here in the state.

The State General Assembly is working through multiple bills that could spell more relaxed gun control for Georgians and an even deeper partisan divide.

With the Governor’s support, State Republicans are pushing five different bills that make it easier for citizens to carry weapons.…

Then, there’s HB 903.

Though similar to the other constitutional carry bills, HB 903 takes it up a notch with the concept of an “enhanced carry permit.” Qualified adults wouldn’t need a concealed permit, but those who take a training course could take their weapons into even more places with this special license.

Representative Joseph Gullett, from Dallas, is behind it.

“I would say the constitution allows us to carry weapons and to have weapons. And I think the more accustomed you are, the more training you have, the more comfortable you are, I don’t think it’s a bad idea. I think it’s what the constitution is allowing us,” said Gullett.

Of course, anti-Second Amendment lawmakers in the state oppose this and all the other pro-gun measures.
Shocking, I know.
What I like about the bill is that it doesn’t undermine constitutional carry, but instead works with it and provides an avenue for carrying in more places.

Look, what I’d like to see is what anti-gun types would call “The Wild West.” Namely, everyone carrying whatever they want, wherever they want.

That’s not going to happen, though. Georgians may generally lean pro-gun, but they’ve grown up and comfortable with a certain level of restrictions on those rights. I’m not justifying it, just explaining it. As such, we’re never going to get there.

What does that have to do with enhanced permits? Simple. These permits help normalize the idea of guns in certain places they’re currently not allowed. That’ll be a huge benefit for a lot of people who regularly find themselves needing to go into such places but who would prefer not to have to disarm.

Over time, then maybe we can look at loosening the requirements for these permits until one day we can eliminate them entirely. But you have to start somewhere. We didn’t lose our rights overnight. We’re not getting them back overnight either.

So, we take what we can get, and I think the enhanced permits are a big step forward toward making that happen. As such, and as a Georgian, I fully support this measure and hope to see it pass. I’ll actually look forward to taking a training class in order to get a permit.

Never in a million years thought I’d say that, either.

BLUF:
NOTE: The science hasn’t changed. Not since yesterday, anyway. No, the politics have changed.

When Democrats finally say the same thing Republicans have been saying for months or years, it’s good. Even though it’s still bad when Republicans say it. The exact same message is good and bad at the same time, depending on which political party is delivering it

Yesterday’s ban-worthy “misinformation” becomes today’s conventional wisdom. And then they wonder why we don’t trust them.

Journos and other Democrats hope that by the time the November elections roll around, we’ll have forgotten what they’ve done to us. We’ll overlook how they mocked and ignored us for dissenting from their rhetoric. They think they can magnanimously agree with what we’ve been saying all along, without ever admitting they were wrong, and we’ll vote for them anyway.

Is It Already Too Late for Dems to Abandon COVID Theater?
HINT: Starts with a “y” and rhymes with “guess”

For almost two years now, we’ve had propaganda pounded into our heads every waking moment:

“Wear a mask. Yes, we know we told you at first that you shouldn’t wear a mask, but never mind all that. Get your shots, which will keep you from getting sick or spreading the virus, unless of course you still get sick and/or spread the virus. Look, forget about our assertions of absolute truth yesterday, and just focus on our directly contradictory assertions of absolute truth today. You will listen to us, and the more we flip-flop and pretend we haven’t, the more you will trust us. If you don’t, you’re a Nazi fascist insurrectionist who probably loves Trump, and we’ll get you fired and ruin your life.”

Believe it or not, this message has not worked. People are not convinced. And the more they’re scolded, the more they dig in their heels.

Now there are cracks in the façade. We’re hearing it from Democrat politicians across the country:

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As often is the case with those who oppose this, Chief Gemboski is wrong about the 2nd amendment. It ‘gives’ nothing. It restricts goobermint as eloquently explained in the Bill Of Rights own preamble. Either they’re stupid, or purposely misleading, as the subject has been covered for many years, thus ignorance is no excuse.

Georgia Senate moves forward with proposed ‘constitutional carry’ gun law

SAVANNAH, Ga. (WTGS) — The Georgia Senate is moving forward with legislation that would concealed-carry licensing requirements for Georgia gun owners.

On Tuesday, 31 of Georgia’s 56 state senators co-sponsored the bill, which, if passed, will make Georgia the 21st “constitutional carry” state in the U.S.

Gary Glemboski, a retired Savannah police officer and Chief of Police at Hunter Army Airfield, said the second amendment is at the heart of this debate.

 “It basically says that you have the right to defend yourself, to protect yourself from harm. The second amendment gives us the right to own something that allows us to do that. Right now, in The State of Georgia, you have to get a concealed carry license from the county that you reside in. With constitutional carry, you won’t have to do that,” Glemboski explained.

Brett Curry, a professor of political science at Georgia Southern University, said the legal debate surrounds the government’s ability to limit personal rights.

“A right can be subject to limitations, you know, in terms of, the right to free speech isn’t going to allow someone to shout ‘fire’ in a crowded theater, for example,” Curry said. However, Curry said this legislation would expand the state’s interpretation of the second amendment and would withstand a constitutional challenge. “If The Bill of Rights, including the right to bare arms, is the floor that you can’t go lower than, the state, here, is not trying to go through the floor,” Curry said, “It’s trying to actually ratchet up protection for the rights in question, as they see it.”

Background checks are one way that the government limits legal who can purchase a gun.

If passed, this legislation would mean that prospective gun owners still have to go through a federally mandated background check prior to purchasing a firearm, but they would not have to go to their county courthouse for a second background review and licensure. Glemboski said he doesn’t believe Georgia’s licensing process adds to gun owner safety.

“The way I understand it- it’s coming from basically the same database, the same information source, whether you’re purchasing your handgun or whether you’re doing a background check for a license,” Glemboski said.

Glemboski, also a firearms safety instructor, said he is a strong advocate of gun safety training. While Georgia’s neighbors, Florida and South Carolina, require between eight and 16 hours of training in order to obtain a license, Georgia doesn’t require any training.

Glemboski said a license to carry would be more meaningful if it had training requirements. “I wouldn’t want to give a 15-year-old or a 16-year-old a diver’s license without some type of driver’s training,” he said. “With firearms it’s the same thing, maybe even a little more serious because of the nature of what we’re dealing with.”

Senators Want EARN IT Bill to Scan All Online Messages.

People don’t want outsiders reading their private messages —not their physical mail, not their texts, not their DMs, nothing. It’s a clear and obvious point, but one place it doesn’t seem to have reached is the U.S. Senate.

A group of lawmakers led by Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) and Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) have re-introduced the EARN IT Act, an incredibly unpopular bill from 2020 that was dropped in the face of overwhelming opposition. Let’s be clear: the new EARN IT Act would pave the way for a massive new surveillance system, run by private companies, that would roll back some of the most important privacy and security features in technology used by people around the globe. It’s a framework for private actors to scan every message sent online and report violations to law enforcement. And it might not stop there. The EARN IT Act could ensure that anything hosted online—backups, websites, cloud photos, and more—is scanned.

New Internet Rules, From Juneau to Jackson

The bill empowers every U.S. state or territory to create sweeping new Internet regulations, by stripping away the critical legal protections for websites and apps that currently prevent such a free-for-all—specifically, Section 230. The states will be allowed to pass whatever type of law they want to hold private companies liable, as long as they somehow relate their new rules to online child abuse.

The goal is to get states to pass laws that will punish companies when they deploy end-to-end encryption, or offer other encrypted services. This includes messaging services like WhatsApp, Signal, and iMessage, as well as web hosts like Amazon Web Services. We know that EARN IT aims to spread the use of tools to scan against law enforcement databases because the bill’s sponsors have said so. In a “Myths and Facts” document distributed by the bill’s proponents, it even names the government-approved software that they could mandate (PhotoDNA, a Microsoft program with an API that reports directly to law enforcement databases).

The document also attacks Amazon for not scanning enough of its content. Since Amazon is the home of Amazon Web Services, host of a huge number of websites, that implies the bill’s aim is to ensure that anything hosted online gets scanned.

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Whether or not you agree with a COS, and whether or not you agree that with a large enough plurality of states with strong constitutional and law guarantees protecting rights, especially RKBA, the chances of a convention running amok over civil rights is small;  the one thing to remember is that the original states called a convention to only fix the deficiencies of the Articles of Confederation, and wound up completely replacing it. If we do have another convention, it will take strong leadership and strongly led delegations to offset those who will undoubtedly attend with evil intent against our freedom and liberties.

An Article V Convention Becomes More Likely as Convention of States Action Hits the Halfway Mark

On Jan. 31, Convention of States Action (COSA) announced that Nebraska and Wisconsin passed resolutions officially calling for an Article V Convention. They join 15 other states bringing the total to 17. These resolutions mark the halfway point for the 34 required to convene a Convention.

South Dakota’s resolution also passed in the house and will head to the Senate shortly. COSA President Mark Meckler is looking forward to a year full of continued success with Iowa, South Carolina, North Carolina, West Virginia, and New Mexico. Like South Dakota, these states need passage in one more chamber………….

Where You Used to go Armed in New York

There is a bill in the New York Assembly that makes most destinations into “gun-free” zones. I call it the “Prohibited Places” bill and you need to know the back story for this to make any sense at all.. even for the politicians.

It never made sense for honest citizens.

First, there is an important case before the US Supreme Court called NYSRPA v Bruen. That case asserts that New York State required ordinary people to get a permit to carry a firearm in public, and then denied those permits to ordinary citizens. It sounds like New York Democrats are conceding that they infringed on the right of self-defense and will lose the Bruen case. Maybe a liberal justice on the Supreme Court already gave them the text of that decision.

That brings us to Bill A8684 before the New York Assembly which “Prohibits firearms in certain locations, including but not limited to all forms of public transportation, large gatherings, and food and drink establishments.”

Since New York Democrats will soon have to issue carry permits, they want to make everywhere a gun free zone for everyone.

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ANTI-GUNNERS IN THE GRASS

Something insidious is underfoot, a strategy so subtle it is likely going unnoticed in your own neighborhood, school district, small town, larger city and in your county.

If you don’t wake up and pay attention, you may instead wake up some morning to discover you slept through a takeover of your community. Now is the time to stop it.

Comrade Workman

For more than a year, I have been receiving emails from an organization calling itself the “National Democratic Training Committee” which seems to support every far-left item on the liberal agenda and every far-left politician. Buried down near the end of each of these messages is this ominous note: “Listen, there are 518,000 elected positions in this country. Imagine if Democrats fought for every race — no matter how small. Imagine a world where our values of compassion and dignity for all people are upheld on every school board, on every city council, and in every state legislature.”

Got your attention, yet? This group also includes a hard link to find out more about running for public office. Just click on “I want to run for office” and the Democratic Training Committee will start indoctrinating — oops, we mean “training” — you for what they hope will be a winning campaign.

To paraphrase their own message, “Imagine if puppets for this group won every race — no matter how small. Imagine a world where their values became law, overruling your values, from the level of school board up through the state legislature.”

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When you’re a demoncrap and still losing the WaPost…..

Joe Bye-Done: WaPo’s Article About Biden’s Struggles Sure Does Drive a Dagger Into His Presidency

Joe Biden’s presidency is one year old—and it’s a total nightmare. The nation is still divided. Omicron is sweeping the nation. Inflation is through the roof. The grocery store has bare shelves. The supply chain crisis is ongoing. The border crisis is out of control. The Afghanistan withdrawal was a nightmare. We might see another embassy evacuation in Ukraine. The jobs reports are trash. It’s not going well. The only person who thinks all is well is…Joe Biden. That doesn’t account for much since he’s dementia-ridden. He’s old. He’s slow. He’s stupid. Three things the president of the United States cannot be in this world. The scent of weakness is present for all to see, which is why Russia and China are flexing big league right now. As Russia prepares for a possible invasion of Ukraine, China is probably smiling looking at the Taiwan Strait.

What’s become clear is that one year into his presidency, Biden can’t do the job. That’s what jumps out in this Washington Post piece about Biden’s “slide” in the polls. The other thing that comes to mind is this question: how did this get published? It’s quite a searing piece, with even members of his own party slamming his performance. Even swing voters polled by Democratic pollsters see a bad word association brewing when it comes to Joe Biden, ones that are election killers. It’s why many Democrats probably cringed when Joe declared he was going to be active on the 2022 campaign trail for the midterms. Biden’s approvals are circling the drain, with numbers ranging from the 30s and 40s. He’s a cancer to his party, with its more centrist members probably hoping he just forgets where they are on the district map. Congressional Democratic leaders told their members to gamble on Build Back Better, with moderates voting for the lefty action items only to have Joe Manchin torpedo the bill. Now, their names are attached to this Bolshevik package. For progressives, Biden promised he could sway Manchin. That failed miserably. It was a disastrous push toward the end of the holiday season that pretty much captured the Biden administration as one of being incompetent and being outright blind to the political realities at hand. You can’t go hard left with a 50-50 Senate and a four-seat majority in the House.

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LOL! Beto Beat-Zero Doesn’t Want Biden Anywhere Near Texas During Campaign

Beto O’Rourke, who has nothing better to do than run another pointless statewide campaign in Texas, doesn’t want any help from Joe Biden or any other Democrat in Washington.“I’m not interested in any national politician — anyone outside of Texas — coming into this state to help decide the outcome of this,” O’Rourke told reporters on Friday. “I think we all want to make sure that we’re working with, listening to and voting with one another here in Texas.”

It’s cute the way Beto makes it out like he doesn’t want Texas outsiders to help his campaign instead of simply wanting the unpopular Joe Biden to not make his inevitable defeat any more embarrassing than it needs to be.

Beto previously ran for U.S. Senate against Ted Cruz in 2018. Beto also ran for president in 2020, and that didn’t go any better.

“No one in Washington D.C. right now can help us with the challenges that we have,” Beto added. “This one is on all of us.”

The most recent Quinnipiac poll has incumbent Governor Greg Abbott (R-Tex.) up 15 points over Beto.

The Coming Dethronement of Joe Biden
Biden’s situation presents the unnamed committee who actually runs the presidency with a huge and delicate problem. It can’t last.

It’s not often that I agree with Joe Biden, but he said something in his nasty, brutish, and long press conference last week with which, if properly understood, I agree.

Don’t get me wrong. The press conference as a whole was a “total disaster.” Notwithstanding the sycophantic performance of the court eunuchs in the regime media, everybody understands this. (But speaking of “court eunuchs,” what’s the female equivalent? It was Jennifer Rubin, who actually gave Biden an “A-” for the presser, that prompts this vital question and I hope some enterprising savant will contribute the answer.)

At one point, a reporter, noting a few of the multifarious failures of Biden’s first year in office—runaway inflation; his failure to “shut down the virus”; the smoldering ruin of his legislative agenda; the sharp, persistent partisan divisions that he came to office promising to heal—given all that, the scribe suggested, perhaps Biden had “overpromised.”

No, no, Biden replied, “I didn’t overpromise, but I have probably outperformed what anybody thought would happen.”

Delicious, isn’t it? Peel off and discard the first bit. Biden clearly overpromised. Just utter the word “normalcy” anywhere near the name “Biden” and watch the reaction. But many people jumped all over the second bit. Senator Ron Johnson (R-Wis.), for example, quoted the word “outperformed” and tweeted: “I’m not sure what planet he’s inhabiting but on planet earth his record is a record of failure.”

That is true. It’s a dismal record of failure, and we’ve only made it through one year. Biden’s even outdone his master, Barack Obama, who before Biden held the world record for worst president in the history of the United States. Biden is far worse, in part, granted, because he continues to follow the blueprint set forth by his clean, elegantly clad predecessor.

But I have to cavil with the idea that Biden has not “outperformed” expectations. He certainly outperformed mine. I didn’t think he would make it through his first year in the White House. But here it is, January 20-something, and the old guy is still in office. Amazing.

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“It’s only wrong to call elections illegitimate if you’re a Republican.”

Biden is hardly the first Democrat to try to delegitimize elections.

President Joe Biden joined Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and numerous other Democrats this week in a partisan attempt to preemptively delegitimize the 2022 election.

Twice the president was asked by reporters whether voters could trust the electoral system, and twice the president contended that a fair election was unlikely unless the Senate was blown up and the Democrats’ election power grab was passed — a maneuver that poses a far more serious and lasting threat to the constitutional order than anything Donald Trump is cooking up right now.

“I think it would easily be illegitimate,” said Biden. “The increase in the prospect of being illegitimate is in proportion to not being able to get these reforms passed.” Vice President Kamala Harris, sent out on the morning shows Thursday, offered basically the same position.

For people lamenting the “Big Lie,” this is nothing new. Trump’s election-fraud conspiracy theories have been endlessly documented. Sometimes it sounds as if he has merely appropriated the language of Democrats, who’ve been playing this ugly game for years. And it’s not only the post-election evidence-free Stacey Abrams-style sore-loserism that we’re typically subjected to. It’s far more pervasive.

During Trump’s first impeachment — headier times, when we were still pretending to care about the fate of Ukraine rather than inviting Vladimir Putin to take a slice — Democrats argued that ousting Trump was a precondition to a fair election.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi warned colleagues that maintaining the position that elections should decide Trump’s fate was “dangerous” and “only adds to the urgency of our action, because the president is jeopardizing the integrity of the 2020 elections.” Adam Schiff, one of the leading culprits in the Russia “collusion” swindle, concurred: “The president’s misconduct cannot be decided at the ballot box, for we cannot be assured that the vote will be fairly won.”

Never once, incidentally, have any of these people offered a scintilla of evidence demonstrating that a single person’s vote was changed, altered or appropriated by Trump or Russians or anyone else. Yet at one point, a healthy majority of Democrats claimed to believe that Putin had altered vote tallies. How many Democrats still believe it?

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Twitter Locked Out Congressional Candidate Joe Kent Over Tweet Supporting Gun Rights

Twitter suspended the account of Joe Kent, a Republican congressional candidate from Washington state for tweeting in support of gun rights. He had to delete the tweet to recover his account.

“We will never give up our gun laws,” Kent tweeted. “Gun laws are infringements of our god given rights.WA state is back at it, a week ago we caught the board of health discussing forced quarantine, now the legislature going after our 2A. No 2A + forced quarantine = Australia.”

Kent, a retired Green Beret, is running for Congress in Washington state.

“Today I was suspended for defending 2A & calling out WA state’s COVID policies including the potential of forced quarantine,” Kent tweeted after he recovered his account.

He vowed to fight Big Tech if he is elected.

“I will NEVER stop defending our 2A & fighting COVID mandates. When I get elected to Congress I will help Break Up Big Tech,” Kent wrote.

Speaking to Breitbart, he said Twitter is targeting those challenging Biden’s foreign policy.

“Twitter’s suspension of me is without cause,” Kent said in a comment according to Breitbart. “In the past 24 hours I have tweeted my concerns about Biden recklessly escalating tensions with Russia over Ukraine. It is clear that Twitter is trying to silence credible voices that are questioning Biden’s disastrous foreign policy.”

He added: “This is big tech limiting my voice as an American and as a political candidate. It’s very telling that they focused on me over my take on an issue that has bipartisan establishment & mainstream media support; another war. The establishment is craving war and won’t tolerate dissent.”

The Tide Is Turning On Gun Control
After two consecutive years of record violence, some on the left may be rediscovering the importance of self-defense.

Contrary to popular misconceptions, the Second Amendment did not create a right to keep and bear arms. Rather, the Second Amendment acknowledges and seeks to protect the People’s natural right to self-defense and the tools required for the exercise of that right, which obviously include firearms. This is why the amendment speaks of “the right” to arms as something already in existence and not to be infringed—rather than as something newly conferred, a point recognized by the U.S. Supreme Court.

It should not be a polarized and partisan issue. Historically, the right of armed self-defense was understood and exercised by figures who were far from conservative or libertarian, from Eleanor Roosevelt and George Orwell to the Black Panthers and Malcolm X. In a dangerous world, they understood that one’s life should not be left to the mercy of an aggressor.

In light of 2021—a second consecutive year of record violence—are some on the left rediscovering the importance of self-defense? There’s reason to think so.

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Wisconsin Assembly OKs GOP-led gun rights bills

MADISON, Wis. (AP) — The Wisconsin Assembly approved a package of Republican-authored bills on Thursday that would dramatically expand gun rights in the state, moving forward with the proposals even though Democratic Gov. Tony Evers will almost certainly veto them.

The proposals would allow people with concealed carry licenses to go armed on school grounds and in churches attached to private schools; lower the minimum age for obtaining a concealed carry license from 21 to 18; and allow anyone with a concealed carry license from any state to go armed in Wisconsin. Currently, only people with licenses from states that conduct background checks on applicants can carry concealed guns in Wisconsin.

Assembly Democrats railed against the bills during a news conference before the floor session began, saying the measures would make the state more dangerous.

“Today we vote on bills that will bring guns to our school grounds, a bill that will allow high school seniors to carry concealed weapons and a bill permitting people from out of state who would normally fail a criminal-background check to carry guns in Wisconsin. As a parent, as a teacher and as a citizen, this is terrifying,” Rep. Deb Andraca, an elementary school teacher and a volunteer with Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense, a group that works to reduce gun violence.

Republicans defended the proposals at their own pre-session news conference.

“Our Second Amendment rights, those are just critically important to everybody across Wisconsin,” said Rep. Shae Sortwell, who is the chief Assembly sponsor for the bill that would lower the concealed carry age. “(We want to) make sure that every adult American, whether they are visiting Wisconsin, whether they are living in Wisconsin, has the same rights under the law.”

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